The Evolution of Axillary Staging in Breast Cancer

Breast cancer treatment has a long, fascinating history. Multimodality therapy utilizes surgery, systemic therapy and radiation. The role of surgical axillary staging in breast cancer continues to evolve. Secondary to randomized, controlled trials, sentinel lymph node biopsy is the standard for surgical staging in patients with a clinically negative axilla. Traditionally, when sentinel nodes revealed metastases, a complete axillary lymph node dissection was performed. Recently however, the value of complete axillary dissection is being challenged.